At a recent prep meeting, I met enthusiasts and skeptics. The optimists pointed at the progress achieved from Monterrey 2002 to Busan 2011 and how the Paris Declaration started to align programs with developing countries’ priorities. This brought more harmonization and accountability between donor and recipient countries. The process now includes inter-governmental, civil society and private-sector actors and addresses gender equality, climate-change financing and the fight against corruption.

The skeptics think that the “aid business” is beyond repair, that the so-called aid effectiveness agenda does not measure "effectiveness" but "efficiency" — looking at bureaucratic processes rather than the actual impact of aid on reducing poverty. One of their spokespersons, American scholar William Easterly, attributes a good share of aid’s failings to a lack of feedback and accountability: “The needs of the poor don’t get met because the poor have little political power with which to make their needs known and they cannot hold anyone accountable to meet those needs.”

But optimists and skeptics seem to agree on one thing: the need to reform the aid architecture before the world gives in to fatigue — and to a free-for-all of disorganized and even less accountable initiatives.

This, to me, is the challenge of the Development Effectiveness process: to reform aid to the benefit and agreement of all actors, and firstly those we are meant to serve. As co-Secretary to the Chairs (Indonesia, UK, Nigeria) in Mexico, our organization can play a major role to help meet this challenge.

One angle of approach is UNDP's strong advocacy for the poor, at the field level and on the international scene.